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Lex Adams

Ex-Soldier of Vanengardt

CHARACTER

NAME: Alexander "Lex" Adams
AGE: 24
GENDER: Cis-Man
SPECIES: Human

DETAILS

ART: here
HEIGHT: 5'11
BUILD: Tight and Msucular but looks thin
HAIR: Brown
EYES: Hazel
FEATURES: If he's shirtless his chest and abs are covered in scars from various injuries amassed over time
ATTIRE: Tends to wear practical gear for mercenary and/or military work on his world
INVENTORY: A shortsword at his side, a proof of his pact with Linda, and electricity-resistant gauntlets
WEAPONS: In full combat attire he has numerous throwing knives, a magic missile wand, a magic warhammer, two magic swords, and a shortsword. Minimally armed it'll be just the shortsword.
VOICE: shrugs but leaves this here

BACKGROUND

HOME:
FAMILY: Divorced mother and father [back on home world]
OCCUPATION: Soldier of fortune
BLURB: Originally a teenager who was taken from earth to another world when he was fourteen and has been stuck there adapting to his new life for the last nine years. Now a 23 year old soldier for fortune and a pact-making summoner having escaped his initial confines.

PERSONALITY

ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Good
ATTITUDE: Flirty and outwardly confident if a bit flippant
QUIRKS: Likes balancing on narrow and/or high places (tree branches, balance beams, etc)
LIKES: Friendship, people he can trust, music, being playful
DISLIKES: Untrustworthy people, dismissal of summon spirits as not being people, overly serious situations without humor
VIRTUES: Loyal, observant, and surprisingly diligent despite his attitude
VICES: Anything which can approximate energy drinks, deliberately pushes peoples' buttons, prone to bouts of extreme melancholy when he doesn't think anyone's looking
HOBBIES: Juggling, potion making (approximating energy drinks from Earth), and playing dragonchess
BLURB: A man who has lost a lot since coming to the world he's in now, Lex tends to pretend that he's just as joyful, flippant, and simple as he was almost a decade ago when he arrived, though at this point his reputation proceeds him. Flirtatious but generally only dubiously lucky in love as he tends to fall for people above his station, he's easy to make friends with but is slow to trust other people.

ABILITIES

CLASS: Champion
STRENGTH: 6/10
DEXTERITY: 8/10
CONSTITUTION: 7/10
INTELLIGENCE: 6/10
WISDOM: 8/10
CHARISMA: 8/10

PERMISSIONS

BACKTAGGING: ✔
THREADHOPPING: ✘
FOURTHWALLING: ✘
ROMANCE: ✔
MINDREADING: ✔
MANIPULATION: ✔
INJURY: ✔
FIGHTING: ✔
KILLING: ✔

PREFERENCES

MEMES: Extremely open
PSLS: Extremely open
SHIPPING: Generally M/F for him
TAG STYLE: Preference to brackets, open

CREDITS

CODE: laenavesse @ efryndiel

PLAYER

PLAYER: Charles
PLURK: @bigdamnhero.plurk.com
TIMEZONE: EST

HISTORY (in short)

Was born on Earth in 1999. He lived there with a divorced but ultimately normal family until he was 14. He moved around a lot and thus grew up a little distant, making friends wise, and had a passion for RPGs, tabletop games, and other fantasy ephemera.

At age 14 he as transported to a fantasy world! The "great" kingdom of Vanengardt was under attack by the Cult of the Forgotten sky, great winded barbarian warriors with storm magic. Losing this war, the kingdom had magically summoned him and dozens of others from across various worlds to conscript into this army. Lex didn't gain any new abilities in the summoning, but was crash coursed on the local magic system and combat tactics. However, only six months later, he saw his first battle, which he barely survived.

Alongside the handful of other survivors from the fort, he was moved to the capital, and there joined up with a new unit and a new round of training. Operating out of the capital, Lex's next five years were ones of boot camp, war, and survival. However, he also met several people who would become true friends for him for the rest of his life during this time. He adapted to the world, and tried to make the best of the situation, even as it traumatized him more. He develops his outwardly bright persona here.

Around age 19, at a cusp of 20, Vanengardt's losing position in the war became untenable, no matter the successes that Lex's unit had achieved personally. In a battle to attempt to defend the capital, Lex was mortally wounded, and would have died if not for the intervention by way of healing magic of an older soldier (the elf Aen Seriga) to whom he still feels he owes his life. But, while dying, he also met his current partner. A summon spirit who asked his desperate prayers for survival, and whom made a pact with him to become his new weapon and new companion. He named them Alaendath (though he usually uses the nickname Linda these days) and in the hazy fog of bleeding out, she came to take on an appearance somewhere between an idealized woman for him and his mother. He tries not to think about that.

When Vanengardt's capital fell, most of its soldiers scattered. Some tried to keep the nation afloat, but Lex (now with Linda) was one of those who left the kingdom to fall to dust. He headed eastward, taking up mercenary work (as combat was basically all he felt he was good at now), usually traveling alone save for his companion. This has been his status quo for the last five years, and in that time, he's made a good name for himself across several kingdoms and regions as a surprisingly talented if unassuming warrior, and gained more experience, equipment, and friendships since then.

His current status quo is that: He's made a name for himself as an adventurer/sellsword in a high fantasy world, he sometimes runs into (or goes to the homelands of) his old soldier companions, and otherwise travels around with his summon spirit partner, searching for either a way back to Earth (though he's more or less given up on that by now) or failing that a place they feel safe calling home. The bullet points below are some samples of the adventures they've gone on in this travels.

Sample Adventure 1: Shortly after the fall of Vanengardt's capital, one of Lex's earliest jobs following his training with Master Kin was to escort a beloved companion of his, Amira, back to her homeland in the far north. Technically a territory under the control of Vanengardt, with the fall of that realm's capital, her people would be newly independent, and the two of them were bringing the news of that, as well as bringing her back there for the first time in years. Lex was in love with her back then, and when they arrived, he was shocked to find that she had a fiancé appointed for her from among the spiritual leaders of the community; a childhood friend of hers named Akash. Lex made a huge ass of himself during that moment, confessing Amira in such a way as to accuse her of harboring feelings for him. In the end, she couldn't (or didn't) deny that to him, but said she had to think of her own destiny she had been foretold and of her people. They parted on awkward terms.

Sample Adventure 2: In the Lasfnae kingdom, Lex and Linda really first made their name famous to the eastern realms of the continent. Working under various lords and knights, Lex would eventually do jobs directly for the crown princess Freyja. This saw him defeating numerous monsters, saving many people, and training under her knights to refine his swordsmanship. During this time, Lex had a short but ultimately failed romance with the Princess, something which he himself broke off due to their difference in station. As a parting gift from that journey though, he got his magic swords he still uses to this day, and that he named Freyja's Embrace in memory of her.

Sample Adventure 3: The Sol Embrace is a deadly region in the center of the continent, where it is said that the sun never stops shining. There, Lex and Linda wandered into a trap - a cursed castle which was run by nefarious demons who sought to exploit the life energy, magic, and eventually souls of the victims there through deadly trials. He likely would have died there if not for teaming up with several other victims of the trap, including a pair of skilled magicians. The two were (he later learned) estranged sisters, and while he had a short lived but doomed romance with the younger one, it was the older he has had the most lasting relationship with. He personally rescued her from a particular death trap, and after they all escaped, crafted his wand he uses now and became a point of contact for him about magic.

HISTORY

Born on Earth in 1999, Alexander Adams was the child of two parents who divorced by the time he was six. Primarily raised by his mother - though he saw his father on weekends usually - the young man developed a taste for the fantastical and grew to be a major fan of fantasy books, tabletop roleplay, RPGs, and other such ephemera. He grew up comfortably middle class, but due to family complications he did move between several schools up through his first year of high school, upon which his life was entirely upended via appearing in another world.

It's in this other world and in the great kingdom of Vanengardt that Lex's true story begins. He'd been summoned to the world at age fourteen alongside dozens of others for conscription into the armies of the failing kingdom against an enemy who sought to annihilate them. All at once, he'd been forced into an exciting fantasy situation, but the reality of it set in quickly. Given no immediately obvious special abilities but rapidly tutored in the local magic system and trained to use their weapons in order to be prepared for his first taste of battle. This would unfortunately come around six months later - the fort he and many of his fellow conscripts had been being trained at came under assault from Vanengardt's enemy - the Cult of the Forgotten Sky. Great and supposedly immortal warriors who flew into battle and made use of horrific magics of thunder and lightning. The fort was utterly destroyed, and it was only alongside a handful of companions and a few superior officers that Lex survived.

Now relocated to the capitol, the lonely and traumatized young man was forced into further boot camp, now alongside soldiers or conscripts actually native to the world. There was an obvious distance and friction between inductees and natives, as their stakes were different, but more in an effort to survive than anything else he threw himself headlong into the social sphere of the capitol, trying to befriend or flirt with everyone he could meet. Ultimately, it was a coping mechanism for the teenager, but it's one which would persist for the rest of his life and one which saw him making some friends and allies along the way. Chief among them, Lex befriended a native enlisted soldier named Naram, a fellow inductee named Aurelio, and a conscript native to this world named Amira. All three would serve as major cornerstones to Lex's life going forward and further serve to give him a greater sense of normalcy while in his new unnatural life.

The next five years were spent in some combination training, fighting, or otherwise serving as a soldier in the Vanengardt army. Though Lex did miss his home dearly, he held no illusions that him or others like him like Aurelio had any real chance at returning to there. Rather, the young man opted to devote himself to this new life, pretending that his spartan lifestyle as a soldier defending his newfound kingdom home against immortal warriors could be considered satisfying. During this time, he spent much of it in a unit which included several of his friends (though he did try to befriend the whole unit) and after the loss of the commanding officer of it, Naram became the officer in command of them. While this did initially create some friction among them all - especially with Aurelio, who chafed at authority at every point - it was something Lex worked hard to smooth over as best he could, wanting his found family in this unit to stay together. While it worked out, it was not without hardships, something equally true in his personal life as his hopeless crush on Amira seemed to always see him putting his foot in his mouth at the worst of times.

( see the truncated history for more, still updating this more narrativized version )

PERSONALITY

Externally, Lex is playful, flirtatious, and seems to take things just a little less seriously than he should at any given time. He tries hard to keep up and affable, humorous, gregarious air about him at all times, and it's really (in universe) mostly only the results he produces which have given him a good reputation in the mercenary community. Incredibly fast to make friends and more than willing to throw out a couple of lines trying to get a date or three, the man comes off as a prankster more than anything to the untrained eye, always ready to crack jokes he's a little less good at than he'd ever admit.

However, this exterior does belie both his abilities and his inner conflict. Ten years of battle experience in the sorts of places a man of his abilities absolutely should not have been able to survive have given him a very keen eye and an almost paranoid outlook on life. He's always trying to be observant; for the actions people or things around him might take, for things around him which can be used as improvised weapons if needed, and for the social atmosphere of a given room. In fact, he will sometimes, especially if feeling suspicious or unnerved, use his general air of affability in order to probe other people for information which might turn a situation to his favor later. Lex strives to never show helplessness, though he's fully admit to weakness, usually laughing it off.

The trauma of the experiences he had back in Vanengardt - some since then - have seen him become a more guarded figure than he projects. Lex is quick to make friends, but slow to actually trust, especially with his deep insecurities, fears, and lingering pains. He's loyal - sometimes to a fault - and somewhat quick to fall in love as well, but even in those situations will usually only try to show what he feels the other will want to see, what will impress them. It gives the mercenary a certain air of bravado to the more keen observer, an air of relative falsehood that can loom over him.

This is not to say Lex is deceptive per se, though. Rather, he just always puts forth the sort of person he would want to be, rather than the person (he feels) he is. This means that while who he "truly is" might well be an intelligent, observant, relatively task-oriented warrior who is constantly on guard around other people, who he tries to pretend to be is a dashing, roguish hero who is always there to help out his friends, his employers, and the world at large. Though he would never word it as such, Lex believes in faking it until you make it, and in his best moments, what he sometimes frets is a facade is genuine enough to trick even himself, and in his worst moments he lies to himself and others to guard a more fragile heart.

POWERS/ABILITIES

Lex is a skilled and scrappy, though not exceptionally super-powered, fighter who has adapted to a fantasy world. His whole adult life involved in conflict with monsters and fighters who are generally stronger than him, the man has adapted to being able to work out how to win fights far above his weight class using his wits, determination, and mastery of many types of weapons. His primary fighting style is using two one handed weapons in both hands, and in his full arsenal he has a shortsword as his primary weapon alongside two magic arming swords, a magic warhammer, a wand which can fire magical missiles, and several throwing knives. While less skilled with it, he can also operate a crossbow and a longbow (the former of which he's better at), and he can at least do okay with heavier siege implements and/or other melee weapons.

However, his primary source of power, if not ability, is spirit magic. One of three major magical systems in his adopted world, Lex empowers his senses, abilities, or gains extra powers by way of contracting with and borrowing energy from elemental spirits. His primary partner and contracted greater spirit is Alaendath (Linda), a greater spirit of electricity. As long as she's around or has empowered him, he has very good control over electricity energy and/or magnetism as a result, simulating spells through that power. That said, he has dozens of other contracts with lesser spirits, allowing him to do things like use wind spirits to jump higher or help track down creatures, water spirits to purify liquids, or life spirits to perform low level healing magic. If you were to apply this to D&D levels, he can probably cast an equivalent of second level spells using any other spirit besides Linda - enough to augment his physical abilities and/or senses, though insufficient to simulate being a true spellcasting combatant.

Aside from his spirit magic, Lex is a relatively skilled (if haphazard) alchemist. As such, he typically will carry potions, tinctures, and/or oils which can do things like heal wounds, augment one's vision, give one resistance to pain, or strengthen armor or weapons. These mixtures are effective, though he trends towards simple and practical effects than anything more flashy like full on transformation or fire breath, due to his low internal mana to power into the potions.

His basic equipment loadout is typically as follows:

His main weapon is a shortsword. Unlike most of the rest of his primary weapons, this small blade is actually not magical, but it is made out of a heavily conductive fantasy metal and has an electrically retardant grip on the handle. What this means in practical terms is that he can often "enchant" this weapon to be filled with electrical energy from his partner or otherwise conduct Linda's power to wherever it needs to go.

His main secondary weapon is a magic warhammer. This was stolen off of a member of the Cult of the Forgotten Sky (who was using it as a smaller throwing hammer, though in Lex's hands and that of most humans it's a pretty sizable thing), and its basic magical property is turning any attack made with it into a double tap of force. IE, all hits it connects with are two simultaneous attacks. This not only doubles its stopping power, but also makes it effective for breaking through armor or carapace, as it can be used to repeatedly target specific points.

A backup weapon he uses (typically in a situation where he can't get the job done with the warhammer and/or he doesn't have access to Linda's powers is a pair of twin magic swords he called Freyja's Embrace. Gifted to him by the princess of the Lafsnae Kingdom, these two swords working together boost the strength of the user by over-juicing their mana in this limbs as well as produce wounds which bleed longer than they should via some light curses. Extended use of these weapons taxes Lex due to the strain it puts on his arms in particular.

While Lex can use bows or crossbows, his primary ranged weapon is actually a wand which can be used to fire magical projectiles. These "magic missiles" are about a par with what one could shoot out of a crossbow, but are bolts of raw magical force. The wand was crafted for him by a skilled magician that he once helped rescue from a deathtrap in the Sol Embrace.

Lex typically wears light armor with many pouches in which to put other potions, knives, or other bits of equipment which might be useful to him in combat. The only truly consistent part of his armor are a matching pair of enchanted gloves and boots. The gauntlets are utterly resistant to electricity, rendering him functionally immune to electrical damage as long as he's wearing them. The boots produce a redundant similar effect, but also are just heavy combat boots. Both are black with yellow accents and were crafted for him by an early mentor of his in spirit magic.

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